105
11.2 Prefigurements of the Odyssey
Within that orbit—or whatever symbol, metaphor, allegory, or language we choose
to target it in mind—there are both light and heavy contingencies. What does that
mean? Operands and binary connectives linking ideas, their transmutation into
words and sentences, and the conceptual demarcations that suggest, ultimately, the
nature of a proposition: such is the realm of adjuncts and extraneities—of programmed and unprogrammed links within whatever realm of thinking applies. Such
propositions contain all the seas and land between, every ecosystem and idea. They
can be called tautological (unavoidable) or contradictory, but they are based upon
dyads, dialectics, thesis, and antithesis. Combine them in whatever alchemical construct or illusion, and the abstraction meets a chair in the person who sits upon it.
The same person who might otherwise languish in bed listening somewhere in a
dark place to a mosquito that is home to a rich diversity of microbiota, as has been
demonstrated in studies of the abdomen of the Binh Phuoc Anopheles mosquito
complex in Vietnam.
10
Hundreds of organisms, and millions of others within those organisms, occupy
the room, the bed, and exponentially into the trillions—encompassing cellular level
counts—within that person seated upon a chair, or in the dirt of a backyard garden,
such that our statements of fact instantly devolve into the blurred edges of fiction.
Twenty years ago, the authors of Life Counts: Cataloguing Life on Earth proposed
a numeric uncertainty of between 10 million and 200 million species believed to
exist on earth, yet to be discovered. Considering that each human’s large intestine
hosts some 70 trillion bacteria (“Humans as Habitat” models), the numbers so
resemble those heaps of sand (the Sorites Paradox) that any one of us can commence a remarkable odyssey, the journey beyond paradox, within one’s backyard
11
(Fig. 11.1).
While we may quantify the differences between light and heavy contingencies of
consciousness, we are still tens-of-thousands of years removed from infraspecific
relations, such as our distant ancestors would have understood daily. But that both
are contingent realities—open to possibility—there is little doubt. We must necessarily begin within the furthest reaching parameters imaginable of a proposition of
and from life.
Of course, the numbers are changing radically. Since 1953, for example, the
Netherlands has seen its coastlines reduced—as a result of enormous human dam
10 See Frontiers in Microbiology, Front Microbiol. 2016; 7: 2095, Published online 2016 Dec 23.
doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.02095, PMCID: PMC5181100, PMID: 28066401,
“Diversity of the Bacterial Microbiota of Anopheles Mosquitoes from Binh Phuoc Province,
Vietnam,” by Chung T. Ngo, Sara Romano-Bertrand, Sylvie Manguin, and Estelle Jumas-Bilak,
NCBI Resources, PMC US National Library of Medicine, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
articles/PMC5181100/. Accessed February 14, 2019.
11 See Life Counts: Cataloguing Life on Earth, by Michael Gleich, Dirk Maxeiner, Michael
Miersch, and Fabian Nicolay, In Collaboration with: UNEP, IUCN, WCMC, AVENTIS, Translated
by Steven Rendall, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2000.
11.2 Prefigurements of the Odyssey
11.2 Prefigurements of the Odyssey
Within that orbit—or whatever symbol, metaphor, allegory, or language we choose
to target it in mind—there are both light and heavy contingencies. What does that
mean? Operands and binary connectives linking ideas, their transmutation into
words and sentences, and the conceptual demarcations that suggest, ultimately, the
nature of a proposition: such is the realm of adjuncts and extraneities—of programmed and unprogrammed links within whatever realm of thinking applies. Such
propositions contain all the seas and land between, every ecosystem and idea. They
can be called tautological (unavoidable) or contradictory, but they are based upon
dyads, dialectics, thesis, and antithesis. Combine them in whatever alchemical construct or illusion, and the abstraction meets a chair in the person who sits upon it.
The same person who might otherwise languish in bed listening somewhere in a
dark place to a mosquito that is home to a rich diversity of microbiota, as has been
demonstrated in studies of the abdomen of the Binh Phuoc Anopheles mosquito
complex in Vietnam.
10
Hundreds of organisms, and millions of others within those organisms, occupy
the room, the bed, and exponentially into the trillions—encompassing cellular level
counts—within that person seated upon a chair, or in the dirt of a backyard garden,
such that our statements of fact instantly devolve into the blurred edges of fiction.
Twenty years ago, the authors of Life Counts: Cataloguing Life on Earth proposed
a numeric uncertainty of between 10 million and 200 million species believed to
exist on earth, yet to be discovered. Considering that each human’s large intestine
hosts some 70 trillion bacteria (“Humans as Habitat” models), the numbers so
resemble those heaps of sand (the Sorites Paradox) that any one of us can commence a remarkable odyssey, the journey beyond paradox, within one’s backyard
11
(Fig. 11.1).
While we may quantify the differences between light and heavy contingencies of
consciousness, we are still tens-of-thousands of years removed from infraspecific
relations, such as our distant ancestors would have understood daily. But that both
are contingent realities—open to possibility—there is little doubt. We must necessarily begin within the furthest reaching parameters imaginable of a proposition of
and from life.
Of course, the numbers are changing radically. Since 1953, for example, the
Netherlands has seen its coastlines reduced—as a result of enormous human dam
10 See Frontiers in Microbiology, Front Microbiol. 2016; 7: 2095, Published online 2016 Dec 23.
doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.02095, PMCID: PMC5181100, PMID: 28066401,
“Diversity of the Bacterial Microbiota of Anopheles Mosquitoes from Binh Phuoc Province,
Vietnam,” by Chung T. Ngo, Sara Romano-Bertrand, Sylvie Manguin, and Estelle Jumas-Bilak,
NCBI Resources, PMC US National Library of Medicine, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
articles/PMC5181100/. Accessed February 14, 2019.
11 See Life Counts: Cataloguing Life on Earth, by Michael Gleich, Dirk Maxeiner, Michael
Miersch, and Fabian Nicolay, In Collaboration with: UNEP, IUCN, WCMC, AVENTIS, Translated
by Steven Rendall, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2000.
11.2 Prefigurements of the Odyssey